Rules Do Not Apply (Levy) - Discussion Questions

Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, please use our LitLovers taking points to start a discussion for The Rules Do Not Apply…then take off on your own:

1. Ariel Levy's memoir begins with this statement: "For the first time I can remember, I cannot locate my competent self." She feels disoriented and confused. Have you ever felt this way, even without the devastating loss Levy has experienced?

2. Levy comes to see herself as the cause of her own collapse: "I knew, as surely as I now knew that I wanted a child, that this change in fortune was my fault," she writes. What do you think? What realization does she eventually come to?

3. How do you see Ariel Levy? Is she too hard on herself? She has led a particularly comfortable existence, one my say a life of privilege. Do you think in some way that comfort shielded her from experiences that the majority of people struggle with and perhaps left her less able to cope with life's vicissitudes?

4. Consider your own life: which circumstances have been, or are, outside of your control? Which ones have been, or are, within your purview? How much control do we have over our lives?

5. Talk about Levy's marriage, her infidelity, and her spouse's alcoholism.

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution.)

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